


two feathers of a flower

by ymnkn



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Misgendering, Non-Consensual Kissing, One Shot, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Sokka (Avatar), Trans Zuko (Avatar), Transphobia, aka sokka misgenders herself bc she’s scared, i think it’s fluffy and soft, if there’s anything else i didn’t tag lmk in the comments!, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 06:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymnkn/pseuds/ymnkn
Summary: “What do you want?”“I want to be a girl.”





	two feathers of a flower

**Author's Note:**

> If I didn’t tag something you want tagged, comment and I’ll add it when I’m able! Hope you guys enjoy—this is my first ATLA fic and i just got back into it so I’m like 😳😳😳

“We don’t teach outsiders,” Suki says with a smirk, “let alone _ boys.” _

“What if I’m not a boy?”

Suki stares, and stares, and stares. Sokka can hardly breathe, waiting for the girl’s judgement.

Suddenly, she breathes sharply. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to be trained to be more like you and the Kyoshi Warriors.”

“We don’t teach boys,” she says yet again.

“I don’t think I’m a boy.”

“You’re a girl?” Suki asks.

Sokka sighs. “I don’t know if I’m a girl. I—I think I might be but . . . I don’t know.”

“What do you want?” Suki asks again.

“I want to be a girl.”

Suki smiles. She doesn’t hesitate to say, “I’ll train you.”

#

Sokka doesn’t breathe a word of the day to Aang or Katara. Sure, he brags about how Suki kissed him on the lips goodbye, but. He doesn’t tell a soul he’d rather be called “she” instead of “he”. He doesn’t tell a soul about how he wore makeup and a dress and liked it—he doesn’t tell.

But sometimes, Aang and Katara send Sokka to town alone, and he wears some of the makeup and clothes given to him by Suki. It feels nice to be called “she”, sometimes.

Today is one such day.

When he arrives at the gates of the town, he ducks behind a bush to apply a light amount of makeup. He pulls down his pants to change into a skirt, and he lets down his hair. And he breathes slow as he stares at his reflection in the pocket mirror.

He enters town with a smile.

“Ma’am,” a guard greets. “Careful around the market,” he warns before Sokka passes, “there’ve been pickpockets all month.”

He nods. “Thank you for the warning,” he responds in a light tone, thinking back momentarily on how Suki spoke. Soft, but strong. Feminine. Almost airy. “Have a nice day, sir.”

“And you,” the guard turns back to his post.

He lets himself grin, walking away, at being called ma’am.

He won’t tell. He won’t.

He enters the market, buys everything on the list given to him by Katara, and he fingers the coins in his pocket when he sees a jewelry stall.

Would Katara notice?

He walks up to the stall, footsteps crunching loudly on the frosty pavement. He eyes a necklace. Earrings.

His ears aren’t pierced. But. Maybe. He could pierce them.

“I think these ones would suit you well, kid,” says the shopkeeper—a woman with graying hair and soft green eyes. She holds an earring set in her hand, one of the cheap ones with three pairs of studs.

Red, green, and white.

Sokka’s eyes go to the woman’s face. She stares back, unmoving. “Do you think so?” Sokka asks quietly.

He leaves the stall moments later with lighter pockets, the set of earrings, and a free hair clip.

The clip is gold—he can’t tell if it’s fake or real—and shaped like a feather. He stares at it his way out of town, and he can’t stop thinking about it as he changes into his pants and wipes the makeup away.

He shoves the skirt, makeup, and jewelry into his backpack and carries the groceries back to Appa, and still he can’t stop thinking about the hair clip.

A feather, huh?

#

His second kiss is a boy named Jet.

“I don’t trust him,” he tells Katara that morning upon meeting the teen.

“Oh, come on,” she says, “you don’t trust anyone. He’s a good guy, okay? He saved us! Please, just, let him be? I want to trust him. Don’t try to convince me otherwise.”

Sokka shuts his mouth then, doesn’t say another word on the topic even though he feels he ought to. He walks away with all the pettiness of a young child who has been denied candy before dinner.

Jet catches him up not too far ahead, grabs his shoulder, and Sokka almost wants to cry at the sudden touch.

He glares at Jet.

“Hey, come with us tomorrow? We’ve got an important mission,” the boy asks with a dangerous smile.

Sokka doesn’t think a thing of it, hears the word mission and agrees with a grin.

The next day the Freedom Fighters try to kill an innocent old man and Jet kisses Sokka to shut him up, else he’d tell Katara that Sokka had kissed him and not the other way ‘round.

Blackmail, Sokka thinks on the walk home, is a cruel thing.

(He, Aang, and Katara save a village and walk away from the Freedom Fighters the next day, and Katara never learns about the kiss. Sokka cries himself to sleep the same night thinking about the girl who used to be a boy in their group. Sokka wonders if he might be the same, and he dreams of thorny roses and the color of mud.)

The next day he enters a café in a quiet town on the Earth Nation’s border.

###

Zuko can’t remember a time in his life that he thought he was a girl. At four years old, his mother called him a princess and he cried until his father beat him senseless in the bathroom.

He went back to the birthday party with a smile fixed on his face, and refused to dance when offered.

At ten, Zuko told his father he was a prince, not a princess. At ten, he stopped being trained to take over when his father died or retired, and his sister took his place.

And when he was fourteen, he challenged an elder’s authority and received nothing but pain and banishment in return.

But.

At least Uncle Iroh calls him the right name and pronouns.

#

Zuko is sixteen when he first catches sight of blood in his underwear and he almost passes out.

“It’s okay, my dear nephew,” Uncle Iroh reassures him hours later, “the hormone blockers have not stopped working. You are okay. It is only a UTI, an awful one, but still. We can get medication for it. You are okay, nephew.”

It doesn’t make him feel any better the next time he sees blood in his piss, but when it goes blue from the medicine he calms down.

Zuko is a prince, and yeah, he cries when he sees blood.

#

One evening, Zuko enters a café in a quiet town on the border of the Earth Nation. He leaves with a girl with a sense of humor and strawberry pink lipstick, and they rent a room at the nearest inn.

Tens of minutes later, when he reaches to unbutton her shirt, she stops him.

“I was born a guy,” she rushes out through heavy breaths, and Zuko doesn’t care.

“I wasn’t,” he tells her, “so I guess that makes this easier.”

The next day he wakes up with the girl rushing around the room grabbing her things and removing her makeup. She is wearing men’s clothes now, and when she turns to look at him—

This isn’t the first time he’s met the Water Tribe boy, but he supposes he can’t call her that anymore.

“Oh fuck,” Zuko groans. “Why do you have to be someone I know?”

“Just forget it happened,” Sokka responds, a blush creeping up her neck. “And, um, you can kill me next time we meet or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Sokka stares at Zuko, the blush darkening significantly. She squeezes her eyes shut and runs to the door. “I’ll see you again! Um, maybe?”

Zuko stares after her. “See you, Water Tribe.”

Sokka smiles, hand on the doorknob. The blush lightens and she glances at him from over her shoulder. “You too, Fire Nation.”

When she’s gone, all Zuko can think about is how soft her legs were, and the smile she wore when she left the room.

Zuko thinks about how he really isn’t all that adamant on catching the avatar, and how much he wishes Sokka could’ve stayed forever.

He falls back asleep with her lipstick on his neck, his face, his chest. He falls asleep and dreams of strawberries and fresh paint.

#

Zuko wakes the next morning to a knock on the door of his rented room.

“Zuko,” he hears, and he sighs because _ Uncle Iroh. _

“Hang on,” he groans. He sits up in his bed, hurries to clean himself and his room and get dressed and Uncle Iroh is getting impatient and—

Zuko opens the door, settles a glare on his uncle’s left eye because he is blind from _ his _ left and he can’t look at both _ anyway. _

“Yes?”

Uncle Iroh grins. “Have a nice night, nephew?”

“I hope you burn your tea and chip a tooth.”

###

“Sokka!” Katara hollers from Appa’s side, a water flask at hand.

“Mhmm,” Sokka answers absentmindedly, his attention on his hands as he sits by the river. A soft smile rests on his face, a blush on his ears, his legs crossed beneath him. He picks and pushes at his cuticles.

“Sokka!” Katara yells again, this time much closer. Sokka looks up at her. “Did you hear me? Are you even listening? _ Ugh, _ are you ready to leave?”

“Oh, um,” Sokka stutters, “um, yeah! Yeah, sure, ready.

Katara sits by him. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing!”

She grins. “You’re blushing, my dear brother. Tell me!”

Sokka puts his hands over his face. “Not blushing, not telling, nothing happened!”

“A girl?” Katara asks, a baby-talk tone and a wider grin than before. “Did you meet a girl?”

“No,” Sokka answers truthfully. His hands are still covering his face, but it doesn’t cover the smile that overcomes him. “I didn’t meet a girl.”

Her eyes widen slightly, and her grin softens into a teasing smirk. “A boy? My little Sokka, all grown up and meeting new people! So cute!” She squeezes his cheek jokingly.

“Shut up!”

#

A few weeks pass, and it is night. Sokka, Aang, and Katara are sat around a fire, the latter two eating and chatting quietly.

Sokka stares, and stares, and sits up straight.

“Katara? Aang?”

The two turn to look at Sokka, questions on their tongues, but they wait.

“I’m a girl,” she says. She waits, watches their reactions. Aang’s face doesn’t change much, he just smiles.

“Okay!”

Katara takes a moment longer, but she nods at her—her sister. “That’s okay. That’s, that’s okay, Sokka.” Her breathing is a little uneven, and she stares at Sokka. Her eyes are turning red slowly, and she sniffs.

“Katara?”

As if that were her cue, Katara begins to cry, and she runs forward to hug her sister tight.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she cries into Sokka’s ears. “It’s not a bad thing! It isn’t! I’m so proud of you, Sokka, I am.”

Sokka laughs, hugs her back. “It’s okay, Katara. I cried when I found out too. It’s a lot, it’s almost too much sometimes.”

“I love you,” Katara says, her face hidden in Sokka’s shoulder so the words come out muffled.

“I love you too.”

#

Sokka hasn’t seen Zuko since that night on the border of the Earth Nation. One time, she remembers, Zuko attacked them. Only once. So—so maybe, maybe it’s okay that she likes him. Maybe it’s okay that she wants to—

A blush covers her face and even so far as her shoulders feel warm, and she curses every god she knows of that red shows so well on her skin.

Aang and Katara still don’t know that she saw Zuko again. She wants to keep it that way, but—_ shit, _ he was . . .

Sokka wants to see him again.

#

They meet again in a Fire Nation city by the sea. Aang and Katara drag Sokka to a beach and there she finds Zuko with his uncle.

She doesn’t go up to him, not really. They meet by an ice cream stall.

They look each other in the eye, and they don’t speak until hours later when they find they are in the same hotel.

“Hey there, Fire Nation,” Sokka greets when they’re alone.

“Water Tribe,” Zuko replies with a nod hello.

Sokka smiles. “How’ve you been?”

“Better,” he says, “I don’t want to kill your avatar anymore if that makes you feel better being around me.”

Sokka laughs. “Yeah,” she answers, “it does.”

Zuko smiles back at her. “Your hair looks nice grown out like that. Keeping the undercut?”

“Yeah, I think it looks better like that.”

“I agree. The pin is cute. A feather?”

“Yeah.”

“I like it.”

They spend the night together in the hallway of the hotel, neither sleeps a wink that night, just getting to know each other and talking and—and Sokka thinks she’s in love with him.

Zuko feels the same.

**Author's Note:**

> made a zukka server for ppl 19 and under if anyone’s interested!! [here's the post!](https://ymnkn.tumblr.com/post/187802196424/hey-i-made-a-zukka-discord-server)


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